Vehicles, such as busses, fire engines, police cars, etc., often include in-vehicle mobile digital video recording systems (mDVRs). These mDVR systems record the scene from the front window of the car as well as other views (e.g. out the back window, passengers in the back seat, etc). Aside from video, the mDVR also records audio and telemetry information such as vehicle speed, geographic position, and so on. Collectively, the content recorded in the mDVR is referred to as Digital Multimedia Evidence (DME), and is digitally stored on an in-vehicle repository (like a traditional spinning hard drive or solid state drive).
Depending on the resolution and quality of the video being recorded, the video portion of the DME can consume from 1.5 Mbp per second (Mbs) up to 5 Mbps of disk space per camera (the audio and telemetry data storage space, in comparison, is negligible). For a 2 camera system, a recording can therefore consume between 1 GB and 4 GB of disk space per hour. Consequently, at the end of a shift the mDVR storage repository can easily contain 10 GB or more of evidentiary data.
Typically, public-safety agencies upload all recordings from all vehicles to a long-term back end digital evidence management system (central repository). These backend systems enable users to review the DME, associate it with a court case, and manage the long-term retention time of the DME to align with state or local requirements. One or more mobile/intermediary upload points are used to transfer the DME from the vehicular storage device to the backend system. The transfer of the DME at the central repository typically occurs via one of three methods: physical removal of the storage device from the vehicle followed by connecting it to the backend; wired connection to the vehicle; or wireless upload. After upload is complete, it is typical for the DME to be deleted from the in-vehicle system or marked such that it can be overwritten when space on the drive is needed for new recordings.
Physically removing the storage media from the mDVR is an efficient way to put the vehicle back on the street quickly (by immediately replacing the storage device with an empty vessel) but it has many evidentiary and procedural drawbacks. To protect the evidence from an officer with malicious intent, the storage media is typically physically locked in the recording device. To remove it, an authorized officer—typically a supervisor—must unlock the device and remove the storage media, thus requiring a supervisor to spend a significant amount of time walking from car to car and collecting storage media. Also, this technique requires the supervisor to formally log that they picked up the storage media and when they submitted it for acceptance into the evidence management system to maintain the chain of evidence. While it enables vehicles to be quickly turned around, manual transfer is very costly to the agency from a personnel efficiency standpoint and consequently not the preferred upload method in the industry.
Wired upload is accomplished by connecting a physical wire to the vehicle, resulting in additional costs to the agency to run physical wires to multiple parking spaces at the station. Aside from the nuisance of connecting and disconnecting the wire to the vehicle, this method is also prone to damage to the upload equipment when officers accidentally depart without disconnecting first. There are also security concerns with having wires connected to the agency's network outside in an unsecured environment. While more agencies employ wired upload than manual transfer, wired upload is also not the preferred upload method in the industry due to the drawbacks noted above.
Due to the cost, inefficiency, chain of evidence, and security concerns of the other two approaches, the preferred method to upload the DME from the vehicle is to automatically perform a wireless transfer of the content once the vehicle enters the vicinity of an upload point to the central repository (such as the police station's parking lot, or near municipal buildings). The major challenge with this approach is that wirelessly transferring 10GB or more of DME data from multiple vehicles in a parking lot is a daunting task from a data transfer prospective. Even with a single vehicle in the parking lot, transferring 10GB+ of data over today's 802.11n technology (assuming a highly optimistic throughput of 150 Mbps) takes about 10 minutes. A parking lot full of vehicles at shift change that are all trying to upload at the same time will result in significantly longer transfer times, making it likely that DME upload will not complete before a new officer needs the vehicle to start the next shift. If an agency has a policy that all the DME must be uploaded prior to the vehicle being used again, this will delay putting that vehicle and that officer on the street.
The upload problem is further exacerbated when considering vehicles that do not return to the station parking lot (or other upload area) at the end of the shift. For example, it is typical for county or state police agencies to assign a vehicle permanently to an officer, who brings the vehicle home at the end of the workday and only return to a station/central repository rarely (like once a month). This means that easily 100 GB+ of DME may need to be offloaded on the rare occasions when the vehicle does return to the station. Not only does it take a tremendous amount of time to upload this quantity of content, but there may be recordings in the mDVR that are needed for evidentiary use, but are unavailable in the digital evidence management system until the upload takes place. Finally, if the storage media on the device becomes full, then the mDVR becomes unable to record new incidents and forces the officer to make a special trip to an upload point to the central repository to be able to create additional recordings.
Therefore, a need exists for a method and apparatus to upload data that reduces the time that a vehicle spends uploading DME. It would be beneficial if the method and apparatus also provided the uploading of DME in a more timely fashion for vehicles that do not regularly return to a station/upload area (e.g. state/county officers that bring their vehicles home with them).
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. It will further be appreciated that certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required.